


Something there that wasn't there before

by Some_Impossible_Fairytale



Series: To One Thing Constant [2]
Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Beauty and the Beast (2017), Disney - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, College AU, Drabble, F/M, Fluff, Shakespeare, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-31 07:31:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10894626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Some_Impossible_Fairytale/pseuds/Some_Impossible_Fairytale
Summary: If he’s going to strip in the Library Belle will literally lose her shit. He knows she has a fantasy about library sex.





	Something there that wasn't there before

**Author's Note:**

> Time stamp to my College AU 'To One Thing Constant' Takes place in between chapters I haven't written yet but the idea wouldn't leave me alone.

“You sure about this?” the tattoo artist’s fingers hover from where they were about to rest on Belle’s ribcage and he pulls back the needle from her skin. Both the artist and Belle cock their heads at Adam, stood with his hands rubbing up and down his crossed arms. He looks uncharacteristically unsure of himself, shoulders hunched, that adorable crease between his eyebrows that he gets whenever he’s concerned or unsure. Its something Belle loves about him, one of the reasons she loves him (though she’s yet to admit that outloud) that his face is so expressive. Adam is one of the most emotional people she knows, the stoicism she’d initially found so distasteful upon meeting him was a mask for his fear. Belle wonders if that’s why she’d disliked him so much, he might be dramatic but he was shitty actor, quiet reserve had been transformed into snotty disapproval. Unnatural on his countenance.

   
Belle only nods, a slight smile gracing her lips just for him as she nods silently. They’d talked about this a lot; when he’d caught her in class sketching the design, in bed when she’d traced the words on his ribcage and told him that’s where she wanted the tattoo, in the car on the way over. Flicking her attention from her boyfriend to the artist, she taps the man gently on the arm to regain his attention and nods again. He’s a decent man and a good artist, his shop is popular with students which is why Belle had decided to come here. Thinking about it, he’s probably seen this exact thing countless times; the concerned significant other looming over their beau whilst they’re waiting in the chair. At least she knows from her research that they’re not working on a meter here.

  
“Darling I’m positive” Belle stretches her hand out to him, smiles when he takes it without a second thought and squeezes tight. The artist, smiles and hooks an extra stool with his leg for Adam to sit on while he works.

  
Once Adam’s settled, the guy catches Belle’s eye and when she gives him another nod he starts tracing the design onto her skin properly. Belle writes as much as she reads, has constructed worlds in her head since she was a little girl to play in when Papa was busy in the shop or when she needed to remember that there were kind, wonderful people like those in her books when the outside world was too much of a storm. When the idea of getting a tattoo had first occurred to her a million book quotes had run through her mind, little ideas of what kind of tattoo she would have if she were ever to get one. It wasn’t until this line had popped into her head that she’d thought of getting a tattoo in all seriousness and then it had kept coming back to her. It was even more surprising that it was an original line that she wanted on her body until death do them part.

  
She’d mentioned this concern to Adam, worried that she’d grow to hate it. He’d smiled and kissed her, sweet and slow, saying that if he’d learned anything about her over the past year and a half, it was that there was no better line, no simpler, more effective declaration to describe her.

  
“Sweetheart, you’ll never tire of it.” The way he’d spoken had confused her; with an unexplainable emphasis not justified by the conversation they were having. Adam was intense in everything he did; academia, friendship, sex but the way he was looking at her right now redefined the word. The way he was looking at her – she didn’t give a damn how poetical it sounded – it seemed to slow time to a stand still. In time, Belle had thought, feeling strangely philosophical, this is how memories are made.

  
They sit in silence mainly, just letting the tattoo take shape. Belle’s trying to blot out the pain, especially as it skitters over her bone. She’d heard that rib tattoos hurt the most but she hadn’t been able to think of anywhere else she wanted it. It felt right there.

  
“Why a rose?”

  
Belle opens her eyes at the sound of Adam’s voice above the buzzing of the needle, eyebrows jumping up her forehead at the surprise of catching his eyes on her face. He’d been reading his book the last time she’d looked.

  
“On the end of the underscore, why pick a rose?”

  
Belle winces before she’s able to answer, swallowing the pain and focusing instead on the way her fingers and Adam’s intertwine.

  
“Roses have a multitude of meanings. Devotion, passion, desire, love. This is a promise to myself, one I won’t break. And secrets”

  
Adam’s brow furrows. Got you.

  
“Historically, if things were sub rosa, under the rose – they were considered confidential.” The words will stand proud against her skin, underscored for emphasis, with the rose standing guard. Adam glances at the rose which is beginning to mark her skin; stark black outline filled with petals as red as blood. There are only the seven words, no explanation. “My reasons are my own.”

  
And this is why Belle loves Adam, why she can give him this because right here, right now, she can’t blurt out those three other words. Because the tattoo is on her ribcage so the only other person who will see it as regularly as Belle herself, is Adam. And she’s given him the explanation of why she’s added the rose, not just because he asked but so that every time he sees the tattoo, he’ll smile just as much as she will. Because Adam knows the meaning behind those words, knows the reason for them.  
Belle’s reasons for this line on her body forever belong to her. And so does Adam.

  
The smile that breaks across his features could rival the sun itself.

  
She’d really going to have to work on saying that she loves him before her heart does something stupid and beats her to it one of these days.

  
In response Adam simply leads her hand, still intertwined with his, to his lip and kisses it, eyes closed, thumb rubbing across her skin. For an instant he look almost pained but its gone as quickly as it came.

  
She’s just about to ask when the tattoo artist cranks the chair upright and grins at her, mirror already to hand so that she can see the finished result properly. “All done”

  
Belle’s eyes skim over the words reflected there, one line from her poem that, unusually for her, she was itching to set to music.

  
I want Adventure in the Great Wide Somewhere

  
Adam’s eyes meet hers in the glass, crinkling in that wonderfully warm way that he has, and another line from the poem comes to her: And wouldn’t it be grand to have someone understand…..

  
It’s nice to know that in terms of Adventure, she’s found someone to share it with.

  
Much later, when Adam’s driven them back to his place and they’ve crawled carefully between the sheets, Belle sprawling herself possessively over his bare chest so that she absolutely won’t get jostled, is when she finds out.  
They’re just lying there, Adam drawing constellations of his own imagining into the skin of Belle’s back where her t-shirt has rucked up as Belle turns the pages of Shakespeare’s sonnets by his ear, highlighting her favourite passages as she reads aloud. He’s waited until she’s paused in her recitations (he may profess to hate Romances but he’s chivalric to a fault) before speaking.

  
“I don’t deserve you”

  
It’s so out of the blue, spoken so factually, like he was naming the colour the ceiling is painting that it takes Belle a minute to realise what he’s actually said.

  
Confused, she shoves the book and pens out of the way and props herself up on his chest, catching hold of his chin in an effort to focus his gaze and make him look at her.

  
“It’s a fitting punishment for a monster. To want something so much - to hold it in your arms – and know without a doubt you will never deserve it”

  
He finishes speaking the quote – Adam has a particular Quoting voice, where his pronunciation becomes particularly polished and he finds a fixed point in the middle distance to stare at to preserve his concentration – before he looks at her. He’s smiling, but it’s sad, resignation.

  
Belle’s chest throbs painfully and it has nothing to do with the new tattoo.

  
She’d become aware recently that Adam suffered with depression and low self-worth, no thanks to that bastard of a father of his, but she’d hoped it didn’t extend to their relationship.

  
“Adam” she speaks his name forcefully, sitting up and pulling him up with her, so that they are both sitting, chests brushing with the proximity. “You are not a monster. You are a wonderful, exhilarating, thoughtful man. You’re a person and a bloody good one. If I didn’t think so I wouldn’t be in this bed with you right now. I wouldn’t have invited you to come home with me to Villeneuve for Christmas.” She cupped his face once more, properly with both hands, her fingers scratching over the stubble he’d grown just for her, just because she’d asked.

  
“You show me, everyone, each and every day how wonderful you are by the kindness, by the size of your generosity. Love is not something we have to deserve or earn. It’s freely given and comes in endless supply. And,” she breathes out, thinking that although this isn’t how she planned it (and isn’t that the defining theme of their relationship) now is as good a time as any.

  
“And I love you. I love you Adam”

  
Adam hadn’t been looking at her before, not really. His eyes had been studiously examining the three moles along her throat, the ones he calls Orion’s Belt. He’s sure as hell looking at her now.

  
“Belle de Barbarac” he breathes, leaning close to her, kissing her briefly, a subtle brush of lips, eyes full of wonder “You are by far the best adventure I have ever encountered”

  
Belle can’t help it, she giggles, surprised by the compliment yet absurdly pleased at the same time.

  
“And I love you too.”

  
His kiss when it comes, is passionate and all encompassing, arms coming up to gather her as close as humanly possible, artfully navigating the tangle of blankets pooled round their waists and the dodgy tenderness of her tattoo.

  
“I love you” he whispers with every press of lips against her body, worshipful and honest in a way Belle hadn’t imagined love could be.

  
Fuck no book’s ever been able to describe this.

  
She returns his declaration at every turn, rushed and reverent, worried she’ll miss her turn. They spend the evening like that, curled round each other, speaking in verses to explain their feelings. It’s quiet and very them, bookish and unabashed.

  
When they wake the next morning, something in Adam seems to have quietened, a doubt, a hesitance to touch her has disappeared. Instead, Belle thinks judging from the gleam in his eyes, there’s joy, but more complicated than that. She thinks its certainty.

  
Adam leaves earlier than she does, he has class and she doesn’t, just the shift at the Library come two o’clock.  
When he comes in, she’s adding front leaves to new additions at the front desk. Her head shoots up as it always does when she senses someone approaching the front desk. Immediately she’s on alert, he’s not bent over but he’s wincing and his hand keeps going to his side.

  
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck she curses over and over, practically vaulting over the desk in her urge to get to him. Not again, please, not again she prays, thinking of the beating he’d taken.

  
Adam holds his hand up when he sees her to halt the barrage of anger she can feel building, lets her catch hold of his hand and tow him round to the back of the front desk, away from nosy students procrastinating.

  
“I’m fine my love, I’m perfectly fine. Just” he shrugs, rolling his shoulderblades and shuddering a little “a little sore. Here, I have a surprise for you.” He bades her sit, leaning against the desk and gently rolling the front of his blue sweater up to reveal toned stomach muscles.

  
If he’s going to strip in the Library Belle will literally lose her shit. He knows she has a fantasy about library sex.

  
But just below his pectorals, Adam stops. She’s almost disappointed until her eyes find the spot that Adam is tapping with one long finger. It’s a string of words littering his ribcage. A tattoo.  
Belle’s breathe catches in her throat. She knows Adam is a Romantic with a capital ‘R’, the trip to Paris proved that if anything, but this is a whole new level.

  
“I’d been thinking of getting one for ages. Kept toying with the idea. And I figured this was better than drunkenly getting a design of a beast done on my shoulder-blade with Lumiere" 

  
Love can transpose to form and dignity. Love sees not with the eyes but with the mind

  
“An ever fixed mark” Belle grins up at him.

  
“For when I need reminding.”

  
They kiss for long minutes, hands pressed up inside each others shirts, fingers resting just beneath each others tattoos.

  
“You’re kind of setting the bar on the Romantic scale my love” she murmurs, kissing his bearded jaw to emphasise her point.

  
Adam groans.

  
“What did we say about the ‘R’ word?”

  
“That your aversion to it is to such an extreme as to take exception thus raising suspicion?”

  
Adam looked down at her, pupils darkening. Belle smirked to herself, pleased. She wasn’t the only bookworm and it pleased her no end that wordiness got Adam hot and bothered.

  
“Shut up”

  
But before Belle can acquiesce, Adam silences her with the taste of his smile against her mouth.


End file.
